“The civil rights movement will come to a dead halt,” he warned. At only twenty-seven, the party tapped him to run for the New Castle County Council the following year, a campaign for which he kept his party affiliation out of promotional material. So effective was it in halting the department’s desegregation efforts that civil rights groups challenged its constitutionality. Biden often twisted himself up in such knots to justify what he was now doing. I get the fact that Yesterday's Man is not intended to be biographical but, there having been so much tragedy in his personal life, it would have been interesting to read more about the impact of the personal on political choices and the values shaping them - the subject of another book perhaps. In working to defeat it, Biden didn’t just help stop busing in Delaware — he showed he was willing to go much further, jeopardizing the wider mission of desegregation and sacrificing the continued march of civil rights in order to stay in power. He lives in Toronto, Canada. . Crucially, Biden still had the energy and enthusiasm of a legion of grassroots volunteers from his county council campaign, and he dominated Boggs in fundraising. “When we find the pusher, we must deal more severely with him than with any other element of the criminal society,” he told one crowd. Thanks to this support, coupled with the financial backing of labor unions, Biden’s donation totals dwarfed every other Delaware candidate, and he outspent Baxter three to one. 1658 Columbia Rd NW, Washington D.C., DC 20009. clock. The newly elected senator Biden was a fairly standard liberal politician for the early 1970s, albeit one whose lack of filter tended to either endear him to observers or annoy them. And Biden dominated in union support. The following is an excerpt from Branko Marcetic’s forthcoming book Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. Carter was just the kind of unorthodox Democrat Biden aspired to be: socially conservative but enlightened on race and waging a fight against the corroded culture of Washington with the help of a small circle of hometown advisers. It signaled the end of the narrow but reliable Senate majority that had defended desegregation efforts from assault. The campaign poured the proceeds into media, spending $268,000 in all to win, a huge amount for the time, and more than any other candidate in the state. With a decade of government-sanctioned lies, cover-ups, and violence having battered Americans’ faith in their political institutions, Biden zeroed in on the themes of trust and honesty. Yesterday’s Man exposes the forgotten history of Joe Biden, one of the United States’s longest-serving politicians, and one of its least scrutinized. All of it went nowhere. It didn’t end there. As he explained, the primary difference between him and Baxter was that he at least still believed government had “social obligations” to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. He pled with a judge to go easy on one defendant, a down-on-his-luck fisherman with four kids who had stolen and sold a cow. He called McGovern’s plan to pull all US troops out of Vietnam in ninety days “slightly impractical” and broke with the Democratic nominee on issues like defense cuts and welfare and tax reform. Share this event with your friends. Yet Biden clearly recognized this rightward swing might disappoint the loyal Democratic voters he still needed. Biden wasn’t afraid to name enemies. Millions of Americans lost their jobs in waves of unemployment, which hit 9 percent by mid-decade. Be involved only if you believe in something. At Baxter’s urging, Biden — now insisting that “on fiscal matters I’m a conserva- tive” and making a cap on government spending the crux of his pitch to voters — became one of a small group of Senate Democrats pledging to vote for it. That is after the election instead of now.” He won the backing of the AFL-CIO and the UAW.